“You have to realize that what you say in public that’s affecting your wife’s job is not only going to affect her job, but also going to affect your relationship because now there’s resentment,” DeAlto, based in New York City, said in a phone interview Monday.

“It feels like he’s harpooning this relationship on purpose,” she continued. “I can't imagine someone putting that kind of gasoline on a fire and still pretend that they cared about my well-being.”

In early November, Conway organized a group of fellow conservative lawyers to speak out against the Trump administration. “We believe in the rule of law, the power of truth, the independence of the criminal justice system, the imperative of individual rights and the necessity of civil discourse,” the group, Check and Balances, said in a mission statement.

That same month, he slammed Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, calling it “unconstitutional” and “illegal” in a New York Times op-ed.

His wife, on the other hand, has been one of Trump’s most loyal supporters since his 2016 campaign, in which she served as a senior adviser. She infamously defended the White House’s claim that the President’s inauguration crowd was “the largest audience” by saying it offered “alternative facts.”

Most recently, George Conway blasted Trump for tweeting he had been “totally” cleared following the release of the sentencing recommendations for Michael Cohen, his formal personal attorney.

“Except for that little part where the US Attorney’s Office says that you directed and coordinated with Cohen to commit two felonies,” George tweeted. “Other than that, totally scot-free.” Cohen admitted that for two payments he acted at the direction of Trump — identified in court documents as “Individual-1,” prosecutors said. The payments named were the ones made to two of Trump’s alleged mistresses during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Advertisement

In a 2018 Washington Post profile of the couple, the Conways, who have been married since 2001 and share four children, quipped over the President. One interaction ended with her husband walking out of the room.

“He is one of the President’s most notable conservative critics and wishes he had never introduced his wife to Trump in the first place,” the piece reads.

Yet public relationships between two people with staunchly different beliefs are nothing new.

James Carville, a former Bill Clinton aide who helped the Democrat defeat George H.W. Bush in 1992, and Mary Matalin, a political commentator and writer who worked with the Republican party, were among those who famously made it work. The two have been married since 1993.

“They kind of always did their own thing and made it fun. You have to try to use them as a model,” Rachel Sussman, a relationship expert and licensed marriage therapist based in New York. “They both have said they worked very hard to not to take it personally. It’s business.”

Sussman said the most important thing for the Conways is to create a private agreement about what can be said publicly — though she’s confident they’ve already done so.

“If her husband is airing his grievances, they have decided privately that her husband is allowed to do that. They are not stupid people,” she said.